Books & Authors

That’s how you came here, like a star

without a name.  Move across the night sky

with those anonymous lights.

–RUMI

“A Star Without a Name”

I’ve always loved books.  As a girl, I loved going to the Carnegie Library in my hometown, checking out as many books as allowed.  The rows and rows of books, like flowers in a garden, just waiting for someone to come along and admire them.  Read them.  Remember them.

I’ve never lost my love for books.  They have seen me through all kinds of life situations.  Challenges, opportunities, educational programs, degrees, and so on.  Many have inspired me with their wisdom, and some have remained on my nightstand for months … wonderful words I couldn’t let go of.  As a writer, a poet, I have nothing but respect for my colleagues, because working with words is always an adventure that takes incredible persistence.

I hope books are important in your life.  So much to learn and enjoy.  The world awaits via the written word.

What are your favorite books, what authors do you follow?  What is happening with the world of books these days, from format to content?

• Here are a few books that I’ve read or plan to read (soon):

The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin

Summer Doorways: A Memoir by W.S. Merwin

Begin with Yes: A Short Conversation … by Paul S. Boynton

The End of Illness by David B. Agus, M.D.

Stay Awake: Stories on Grief and Everything After by Dan Chaon

Musical Chairs & To Begin Again by Jen Knox

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington

The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock

Crestmont by Holly Weiss

Standing at Water’s Edge: Moving Past Fear, Blocks, and Pitfalls to Discover the Power of Creative Immersion by Anne Paris, PhD

Bird Cloud: A Memoir by Annie Proulx

The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rassmusen

Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life by Kathy Jordan and Fred Mandell

This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness by Laura Munson

Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo

Devotion by Dani Shapiro

Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife by Lisa Miller

Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought Our Family Home by Susan Pohlman

The Ride by Jane Kennedy Sutton

History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky

Masters of the Heart by Michelle Hoover 

Life after Death: The Burden of Proof by Deepak Chopra

A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace

Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

Understanding Our Mind by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl

Lit by Mary Karr

A New Dawn Awaits by E. Dee Conrad

(Re) Making Love: A Sex after Sixty Story by Mary L. Tabor

The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier

Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish with Confidence by Roz Morris

Composed: A Memoir by Rosanne Cash

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

How to by Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen

The Discomfort Zone: A Memoir by Jonathan Franzen

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared M. Diamond

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond

Visions, Trips & Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die by David Kessler

Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death by Robert Moss

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod 

Too Much Happiness (stories) by Alice Munro

Hot, Flat & Crowded by Thomas Friedman

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul’s Potential by Michael Bernard Beckwith

Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon

PrairyErth by William Least Heat Moon

Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot by Richard Restak, M.D.

Comfort: A Journey Through Grief by Ann Hood

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order by Joan Wickersham

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch

Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg

Happy Yoga by Steve Ross

Black Hills by Nora Roberts

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Poe and Fanny by John May

An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

From Where You Dream by Robert Butler

Wesley the Owl by Stacey O’Brien

The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey

Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds edited by Billy Collins, paintings by David Allen Sibley

Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag

Death be not Proud by John Gunther

The Art of Memory by Frances A. Yates

… and many, many more!

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time:
the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material
substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.
~Thomas Carlyle